My day was great... until....
...about 4:45 today.
I go in around 9:15. It was supposed to be nine, but my schedule's flexible, so that's actually not that big a deal. Besides, I've got plenty to do, so I do it, and the day goes swimmingly.... until fifteen minutes before I was supposed to leave.
A little background: I have a ton of clerical experience and some years of experience in the medical field. I currently work for an agency which helps parents in need and their children find resources of all kinds, from medical to educational to housing, etc. My department concentrates on mothers with infants and toddlers. We are thus required to operate under the provisions of HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which governs the privacy of client/patient information. In short: medical records need to be kept in a locked location.
Okay. Now on to the vent, in two parts. The first is clerical and the second is medical. Hence the background.
I find out from my supervisor C. at 4:45 today that the agenda for a meeting which is to take place **tomorrow morning at 11:30** hasn't been sent to anyone attending the meeting. This task was delegated to a co-worker, D., who was asked to send it three times last week. We had to work on it until 5:45 -- simply because the agenda indicated neither the time nor the location of the meeting. That alone set us both off, never mind the additional concerns I had to mention at the time which resulted in a distinct change in my job description. (In other words, I made more work for myself, but I'd rather be the one to do it than D., as I see it is NOT getting done.)
At least one person who received the agenda today is out of the office until tomorrow morning, time unknown. This is a community meeting, and Ph.D level practitioners will be in attendance. Essentially, this makes us look bad at a community level... and to people who have all kinds of letters after their names. C. is not only embarrassed, but angry. I don't blame her, and in fact have other concerns which I bring up at the time, and of course I too am angry about this not being done because I could have and would have done it had I realized it had been so neglected. I told her just to let me do it next time.
That's the clerical bit. Now for the medical, which explains my mention of HIPAA.
The same co-worker took files home today in order to put them in alphabetical order for filing tomorrow. She's staff, so I didn't really think too much of it until some hours later, when I realized the significance of the fact that the files themselves were not in a locked container for transport. As far as I understand the provisions of HIPAA, that constitutes a violation of the act, so I sent a message to my supervisor relating the fact. I'm not just working there, but am also a certified paralegal, and if something comes up later because of this I don't want to lose my paralegal status. I don't know if it would happen, but the fact is that it could. I'd rather have myself covered. JUST in case.
This whole thing at work as gotten to the point where I'm pretty sure D. is just going to walk off the job, and that soon. I get the distinct impression that there is going to be some serious ... well, you know.... hitting the fan tomorrow morning and I am NOT looking forward to being there when it does. I don't know if I'm going to be pulled into "that meeting" when C. confronts D. I hope not.
This message was last edited by the user at 06:57, Tue 12 Feb 2013.